Fly on the Wall
by tlwb
Summary: Follow a millennial's life as she tries to navigate through life, family and friends, through conflicting thoughts and mental health issues.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

_I look down from my window at the construction materials and the light glow of the sunshine in the backyard of our rented house, well the house which will be rented be someone else in a few weeks maybe. I look at my notebook and look at the grid lines and the number of times I have written 7 with my chewed up pencil. After a few minutes I hear my name being called out from outside. I looked out of the window to see the tiny boy standing below. He is waving at me and asking me to come and play on the construction sand mountains. I look down at him with a slight pang in my chest. I am going to leave this life behind in the foothills of the Himalayas to start my new schooling and life in the city._

_"Coming!" I scream from my window. I wear my sandals and knock on my neighbour's door which is opened by instantly by a girl in an orange summer frock. With a huge grin on her face she offers me some lime that she had picked from their orchard. Meena and I run down the stairs and I hand the extra lime in my hand to Alex standing below. We climb the construction sand hill and sit in the sun peeling the lime and sucking the fruit..._.

I try to remember the faces of the boy and the girl...Alex and Poppy. My memory escapes me now...All I can remember is the three of us sitting in the sun eating raw lime ignorant of the beauty of the moment and forgetting how this moment would be just a relic of my past. I frown thinking that I did not know then that would be the last time I would see them.

Did not know that starting my life in the city would turn my life upside down...

I feel like I was stuck in a daydream, in my four-year old nostalgia of a simpler time as I stare at the profile of a recruiting research group in a different continent, trying to decide my future, the warmth of the sun in my memory fading away, replaced by the cold of a February night and my eyes drooping over with sleep.

I turn up the heating of the thermostat and close my laptop not being able to focus on my work and decide to retire for the night.

It was going to be a long day the next day.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

_I sit on a chair nervously rattling my fingers on my desk. I look around myself, I find Sam and Sean making jokes and laughing. I feel awkward being the only girl in the play since I study in a girls' school and now I sit here in the town hall auditorium trying to concentrate on my script as the two boys keep on bursting into laughter. Soon Miss Maya comes up and asks us to stand and get ready for our scene._

_Being tall, I was also playing a boy for this skit that we were performing for the spring fest in the town. I have never actually minded being a boy for any role, having short hair and too tall for a girl of my community has always given me an advantage to sort of play as the opposite gender as our society always pressurises us to look a certain way being a certain gender._

_"Take your positions!" exclaims Miss Maya._

_I take my place adjacent to Sam and opposite a new guy in the locality I had not noticed until now._

_The scene was supposed to be us in class having a big paper fight with throwing paper planes at each other and trying to wrestle as the very annoyed and strict headmaster walks into the classroom._

_"And action! "_

_We have a good time as I make paper planes and paper bombs and throw it around the class. Thankfully I don't have to wrestle anyone since I am playing the role of an effiminate boy character. However as the scene progresses with the headmaster walking in and calling me to his office for having organized a prank against another school's teacher, I was still holding on to a paper plane that was thrown at me by the new quiet guy._

_At the end of the scene, I curiously open up the plane to find an amazing panoramic view of a beautiful lake made with pencil strokes as a guy wearing a hat is sitting on the boat and looking over at the sunset. I was taken aback at the artistic style as I had taken a knack towards drawing myself but sort of quit in early middle school when I realized that I never was going to be good at it._

_I ran to the new boy who was about to leave at the end of our rehearsal because I was curious as hell._

_"Did you draw this? " I ask him_

_"What does it matter? " he replied and was simply taken aback by the harshness of his voice._

_"Well don't be so arrogant. I was just going to say that it is a beautiful pencil sketch and too good to be thrown away at a play rehearsal! "_

_"Maybe I wanted to throw it away so that someone might pick it up"_

That was I remember how someone first flirted with me when I had first started high school. I keep on drifting between my daydreams as the reality of finally becoming an adult and trying to handle my life seems too much work.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I sit in front of a group of other job candidates as we wait for the first round interview results to be announced and I hear the meaningless conversation we are having.

I am sitting opposite an East Asian girl who was currently interning at a renowned university in the States and is already sure of a position there. To my left is a dude from the UK trying to be a show-off in terms of his knowledge and experience with respect to our current job positions. Some of the candidates are talking about their favourite video games that they play with their significant ones. I feel weird as I cannot relate with any of these conversations.

The results are announced and we all pass and we celebrate at a bar downtown.

We all are extremely friendly with each other as long as we are not applying to the same position.

However, I have a feeling that I do not come close to them in any respect. I spend that night at the bar wondering how much more experienced they are compared to me. That they have succeeded in all aspects of life compared to me- be it academia, career, friendships or relationships. I have failed in all of them in some sort of way.

Either I have been the second preference in every aspect or not a preference at all but had just kept on the pretense of being significant.

I am taken back to my memory of my first ever friendship in middle school.

_Samantha and I used to return home from school on the same school bus. I remember she is the closest I had to having a sister. I could just tell from the top of my head her favourite colour, soda, singers, celebrity crushes, spicy flavoured chips. You name it, I knew it._

_I think she did the same. _

_We were both awkward wall flowers and I remember the peaceful silence between us during a school party as we quietly sat on the bench and watch the rest of our friends dance away._

_But then high school happened or somehow drama happened with petty-coat politics involved. Both of us were good in class and we never considered each other as our competitors. But there were people around who poisoned her ears when I started having black outs because some nervous problem I was having and I was away from school for a long amount of time and then things changed. She started bullying me in the school bus, snatching away my stuff, breaking them and not helping me out when I needed her help. I did not see the red flag when she chose someone else as her science exhibition partner and not me._

_And then as we started tenth grade one fine day she just stopped speaking to me. She would look right through me when I was standing right in front of her as if I was wearing some sort of an invisibility cloak. _

_My parents asked me for a long time what I had done and somehow it must be my fault. And I believed it. I spent the rest of my high school believing that there was something wrong with me. I confronted her about it and she had just dismissed it as "I don't remember, I think we just drifted apart", which was fucking bullshit. Samantha had started starving herself because she thought that she was fat and she lost her healthy glow and her cheek bones became more prominent. I guess you could call it that she started having an anorexic problems. If we had stayed friends I would have told her that if she thinks that by starving herself people are calling her hot then fuck them! She was a beauty of her own kind and anyone who knew her would love her for what she was. But her ignorance towards me had hit me like a train. I could no longer enjoy the songs that we liked, or the food that we enjoyed together. Things went worse and I started having anxiety over the tiniest of things, because I did not want to disappoint._

_I remember in my final two years of high school, I was in a new friends circle but I always made up in my head that I was the misfit as no one would accept me for the broken version I am. That's probably why I have not taken a shot at ANY relationship. _

"Enjoying the wine?" Cheng, the East-Asian girl asked me.

"Yeah I like wine compared to beer", I replied.

"Look at us! We are the only two people not dancing around at this party, I think that is what drives us to be good friends!"

"Yeah no kidding", I murmured as I downed the rest of the wine in a single sip, enjoying the burn in my throat.


End file.
